Badlands
by Messiah91
Summary: What if Agent Henriksen had managed to ship off the Winchester boys to prison – and the rest of “Jus In Bello” never happened? And what if, six months later, they got out?
1. Prologue: A Mistake

Disclaimer: I don't own "Supernatural" or profit from it in any way; I merely plunder its intellectual property for my own amusement. I also don't own the Terrence Malick movie from which I've stolen my title, or the Fiona Apple songs that I will use as my subsequent chapter headings.

Author's Note: This is a complete departure, in theory at least, from "The Final Solution," but I intend this story to pack just as much of an emotional wallop. Also, my eternal gratitude to my Beta, Adara.

**I**

As he heard the door slam in the background, Dean already knew it was too late. And, considering the situation they had been entangled in just previously, that was a pretty pessimistic outlook. I mean, you take on demons and their assorted ghoulish compatriots for most of your life, outsmart an annoyingly self-righteous FBI agent who's been tailing you for several months, and still manage to kick back and have some fun (and a few beers) every once in a while? That's a pretty...well, huge accomplishment, Dean thought, but it meant next to nothing now. His ability to recall just exactly what kind of salt he should load the buck shot with to take out a resident Avestan spirit, or his devilish charm in picking up the ladies, meant exactly nothing as he stood pacing outside of the screen door he'd just torn through – waiting for Sam.

Ironically, this was a situation tailored for hunters; Dean was just on the wrong side. Stealing a moment to peer back into the dark house, through the moth-eaten screen and into the inky abyss from which he kept hoping Sam would appear, he considered the symmetry.

"Whichever one of us thought it'd be some Big Nasty was an idiot; we should have known better: it would never be the monsters who wear their skin on the outside," He ruefully mused (and this was not a mind given to many rueful musings, mind you – only highlighting the severity of the situation). His insight came too little, too late, but that didn't blunt the force of its sincerity, or truthfulness. Agent Henriksen was a handsome, charming adult male. He was also a sociopath. Surprise, surprise.

A noise behind him: a rock being overturned. Perhaps it was a scampering forest critter, one of Snow White's lackeys out late for some partying. Or maybe it was a shoe, a shoe being worn by a foot being used to walk closer to him. Maybe this shoe wasn't friendly.

Dean turned his head back toward the door for one more millisecond of hope – "If Sammy comes out right now, we could take this guy. We could still escape." – and then grabbed the biggest rock he saw within a three-foot radius.

"As I walk up to you now, Dean, I swear to you there is no point in using that for anything other than braining yourself," a voice called out. It was silkier than when they'd last encountered it, back in Bela's hotel room: lacking less in the mania and desperation for success. Then it had sounded, Dean could now safely reflect, a lot like John. Now it just sounded like Mephistopheles, coming to collect his Faustian due. Dean allowed a wry smile to grace his features for a brief moment: the idea of a Soul Collector coming for Dean – now – was pretty hilarious. If he hadn't been currently crouching into an offensive crouch, he might have even laughed, or at least used his findings as basis for a comeback to Henriksen, who was even now approaching from the darkness of the backyard.

"You know, we could have spared ourselves the trouble and the stress of a break-out if we'd known ahead of time you would find us," Dean said.

"You know, we could have spared ourselves thousands of dollars in overtime if one of you Winchesters had just gotten yourselves killed," the agent responded.

"That's the rub though, chief: we Winchesters, not so good at the whole 'dying' thing."

"Oh, my bad then: I'll just have to call my men here and find out who it was then they pumped full of lead, then. They told me it was a lanky fella trying to get into this house here," said Henriksen, gesturing to the ranch-style shadow behind Dean. "But maybe it was a mistake…"

"You know, I think in the legend, isn't the Devil supposed to be more persuasive than this?" If there were a God, Dean prayed right now he let none of the fear he'd felt slip into his statement.

"I'm no Devil, Dean. Really I'm more of an avenging angel."

"Is that what you've told yourself all these long sleepless nights hunting us down?"

"Does it matter, really? Telling you, and continuing this pleasant little conversation, only prolongs the inevitable. We all know why I'm here – and what it means if I am before Sammy is."

There was a lot to be distressed about in Henriksen's last sentence. But for some bizarrely protective reason, Dean focused on Henricksen's casual reference to "Sammy." He actually had to work his jaw to keep himself from retorting with something not only completely pointless, but wasteful; he had precious few seconds left, and using them to defend his little brother, and not even really defend him, would be completely idiotic. And yet, backed into a corner as he was, wouldn't such stooping really be forgiven? He was a caged animal: they were known for crazy stunts.

_Stunts_.

Dean had an idea; the corner he'd been groping himself into ever since they'd managed to weasel away out of that district-deputy's car gave way to a secret passageway.

"Don't call him Sammy," The hunter ground out – hopefully with all the necessary overheated gravitas.

"Would you prefer 'pond scum'?" The agent called out, sauntering forward lightly. It was a matter of inches really, and Dean saw that it was intended to put him on his toes, prepare him for a fight, stress him out. But Henriksen hadn't figured in the fact that you didn't play a player and Dean certainly wasn't the former. There was a game going on between the two men, anyone could see that, but it was on the fugitive's terms. He just made it look like Henriksen's. He just made it look good.

"I'd prefer you not speak at all, really. But seeing has how assaulting a federal agent is a felony, and seeing as how doing the damage required to wire your jaw shut could definitely be construed as 'assault,' well, I'll just have to play nice."

"Nice? You call vandalizing government property, committing multiple homicides, arson, breaking and entering, smuggling contraband across state lines, a whole host of firearm violations, and numerous counts of obstruction of justice 'nice'? You're sicker than I thought Winchester." As he finished rattling off the numerous allegations of breach of décor and justice, a note of hysteria cracked his voice. Had he not been dressed so suavely, or been maneuvering so calmly, Dean mused, Henriksen could definitely look crazy.

_"Hell, to the people that get to know him…"_

"What happened to 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty'?"

"Nonsense. Ever heard of 'To Serve and Protect'? Yeah, that's me. And I'm protecting all of these nice folks--" Again he gestured to the shadows of the surrounding houses, "--from you."

"Funny: I never saw myself as much of a menace compared to some guy who totes two guns daily, and orders tactical assaults on two men he couldn't even convict in court."

"Are you pleading 'Not Guilty'?" Henriksen asked sardonically. Obviously, he was enjoying the game, getting into it. Time to change gears.

"You never did promise not to use 'Sammy' again."

"I don't remember caring," The agent tossed back. He hadn't yet noticed that as the two had been speaking, Dean had eased the rock around his back, springing his arms tight for the throw, pumping his legs mentally for the run, and preparing in his head the dressing-down he'd give Sam for making him worry like that. All of which had been the point.

"Unless he's really been caught…no, of course not." It wasn't as if Dean couldn't understand a scenario involving his little brother's capture. But at this stage of the end-game, in which every pawn mattered, he had to play as if he still had all his pieces left: as if his opponent's King were in plain view.

"Go," he muttered quietly. Henriksen's ears perked, barely.

"What–" The rock was in the air, and the sentence was never finished. To an observer, one moment the air would have been charged with manic-glee (the predator) and desperation (the prey), and the next all would be chaos. Because suddenly, the predator was on the ground, and the prey was running much too fast.

As the picket fence approached him, Dean prepared to leap, in one clean motion, over it. As he did, a part of him mused: "I wonder if Sammy will appreciate now the danger all these little white pickets can pose."

He tightened his muscles into coils of decision just waiting for the starting shot.

"Go–"

Fire. A brief, razor-thin line of pain across his leg. He collapsed, the dull gleam of the wooden boards not three feet from his eyes.

Fire everywhere. And suddenly it was all pressing down on him: the madness of their situation when they'd first been caught; the worry and panic at having to create a plan in a miniscule, and fixed, amount of time; the adrenaline rush of pulling off their escape without a hitch; the frenzied chase after the hitch had caught up with them; their thirty-seconds of palaver before Sam and Dean had parted ways, for however briefly a period they had intentioned, before they were to rendezvous back in this backyard, where, of course, Dean did meet someone…just not Sam; and now this, the worry for his brother's safety, the 

frustration at their capture at the hands of this crazed self-righteous lunatic, and (however shameful it may be) the well of terror that had threatened all night to overtake him.

Now it was – it, and about 1,000 of its closest friends. They smothered him. And as he sank, he distinctly heard the crunch of approaching feet. Sadly, the shoes sounded distinctly "government-issue."

He gave in; he gave out.

Dean Winchester slept. But there would be no rest.

**II**

Knowing and doing are two different things. Knowing that what was happening to them was a mistake, as Dean did, didn't really enable him to do anything about it.

It was a battle though, not to try at least, the entire way. But it was the worst when he first woke up.

There wasn't any more fire, finally, once Dean opened his eyes. Instead, there was ice. It coated him, causing tremors throughout his body, and froze him where he sat, behind a wire grille in a police cruiser, speeding down a dark highway. The driver wasn't FBI, surprisingly, but rather a plump, middle-aged man: a lifer. The lifer was humming to himself. No, not to himself, Dean corrected, but along with the quiet music he could faintly hear from the radio up front. It took a moment, but then he realized the music was low in consideration for the vehicle's backseat passenger: him. Yet the man's token kindness didn't warm Dean, not in the least. So still he sat, frozen to his seat, coated in ice miles thick.

Internally, it was no better. It was sub-zero, and yet still worse than previously indicated. He was shivering because he was cold – his sweat from the exertion of the chase had become tiny droplets of ice thanks to the cop car's air-conditioning – but he was frozen because he was trapped, pulled in two separate directions, and there would never be resolution. If he budged even an inch, Dean feared he would split clean down the middle.

On one hand, he didn't have the faintest idea in hell what was going on.

On the other, he didn't want to wait another second to find out.

Obviously, there were conflicts between the two.

Common sense argued that he needed to find out the basics first – Was he fine? Was Sam fine? – before he concocted any sort of hare-brained scheme.

Dean Winchester argued that he needed to reach for the six-inch curved blade he kept in his boot and begin hacking away at his restraints. Arguably, it would be impossible to destroy his handcuffs, but that wasn't the idea. Invariably, the ruckus would cause the officer to pull over, at which point Dean would hide his knife so when the officer opened the back door to investigate…

Bam.

No.

He couldn't. Common sense won. He had to find Sam, and plotting a (possibly successful) escape while he still had a chance would do no good for them in the long run; it would save no one. Because if Dean got out and Sam didn't…there would be no victory then, and no surrender. There would be nothing.

So why did Dean continue to sit, then? If his mental struggle finally gave way to a decisive answer, why the look and the posture now seemingly welded to his person? The answer goes beyond circumstance – it has nothing to do with chases or policemen – and is based more on personality. Dean Winchester was so still because at that very moment, and every moment going forward, he assumed, he was suppressing – with great effort – the overbearing survival instinct. He couldn't leave, and yet he craved it. He craved the insanity of the escape, the slip through a loop-hole where none had been previous, and the possibility of it called to him, _screamed _for him.

But still he sat.

And sat.

And sat.

Until, forty-five minutes later, he was pulled from the car and escorted into the building, where he was confronted with his next mistake: ever letting Sam get hurt.

It was horrible, when one imagined it, but in real life: not so bad. Dean had imagined a body riddled with bullets, pumping blood from a dozen newly-created holes in his brother's body, and no one around to help him. What he encountered was a mass of bruises, and an unconscious brother.

"You've got one minute," the officer explained, leaving Dean in the lobby to the building with Sam. Apparently no effort would be made to wake up the suspect.

What did Dean do with his minute? Swearing not to let another mistake occur, he turned that minute into a lifetime – memorizing and sucking up every tiny detail of his brother. He remembered the arch of Sam's forehead as it met his shaggy hair, the ever-so-tiny cleft in his chin, the way his nose broadened by degrees at perfect intervals, and the way his face came to a square-point. Dean also stored away the eternal image of Sam's lanky sprawl, how even in discontent oblivion his body went twisting and turning into unimaginable positions, and (even though he couldn't see them) the crystal haze of his younger brother's eyes: the shades, melting and pooling into one another, and the pain and loss that would no doubt be reflected in them once Sam woke up.

Again, Dean felt the urge to stay, to fight. But doing that would risk this, what was right before his eyes. He would have to bide his time: they would have to be careful before a tactical strike could be made.

These are the things he soothed himself with. They mattered little, in the end.

He heard the cop coming, and, taking one last second, he froze in the forefront of his mind, the battered face of Samuel "Sammy" Winchester. Dean swore to himself that he would move Heaven and Hell to erase that mental picture with a better one, in the future, when this was all fixed.

"Let's go." And he did.

And as he heard the cell door slam in the background, Dean already knew it was too late.

Mistakes were made by all parties involved. This was the sentiment routinely expressed throughout the follow-up report to the Winchesters' capture.

Of course, the report focused mainly on the degenerate activities of the brothers, and the civility-yet-nobility Henriksen had displayed in his "dogged pursuit," but it was a credit to the paper's writers that there were moments taken for a look at the overall picture, albeit in a light unknowingly patronizing:

"_It is the opinion of Agents Pierce, Cole, and Davis that should any persons desire for future knowledge to wonder at the source of the atrocities at the center of the Winchester Case, they would have several places to look; there would be several non-objectionable targets for blame."_

Still, these men had no way of knowing. In their minds, the mistakes made had been of the System, and those committed by men (or rather, men not currently being charged and finger-printed) were unavoidable symptoms of circumstances both arbitrary and impossible to predict. Yes, they would say, there were flaws and cracks and smudges hiding just beneath the too-perfect shell of American Justice, and there was a problem, but one, certainly, too slight to blemish the glory of the FBI's achievement.

The irony was that they were partially right. Mistakes had been made by all parties involved. And mistakes were still being made – or what else would you call the act of the police hauling in a perfectly healthy (both physically and psychologically) young man for crimes they couldn't yet prove? _They _would call it preemptive, preeminent, and succinct.

_You _should know it as tragic, swift, and concrete. And it was a mistake.


	2. Criminal

**I**

The grays blended into beiges, making a panorama of monotony.

If the color arrangement hadn't been so boring, perhaps Dean would have had something to spice up his early morning. Instead, each time he opened his eyes after a not-so-restful night's sleep, he just got more and more blah. And he'd been opening his eyes now for 173 times – 173 mornings with colors that got progressively more muted until one fine day, Dean feared, it wouldn't matter if there were suddenly great geysers of neon washing down the prison hallways, because he wouldn't notice. It seemed he was colorblind, an outcropping of a deeper soulful malaise. But it wasn't something he openly acknowledged; on that dreary 174th morning, really the only thought that swam in between Dean Winchester's bleary eyes was:

_"I wonder if the Warden will let the new cook actually attempt tacos today…"_

A snoring sound to his left: his cellmate, a brutish fellow who hadn't bothered to volunteer his name or past (a fact for which Dean was imminently thankful: after three previous cellmates, hearing a fourth "I'm innocent!" story would really be too much). Dean considered throwing one of his moccasins at the slumbering girth, but before he could give the plan much thought, a noise echoed down the long corridor outside his cell door.

"Morning waits for no man!" It was the warden.

The sun beat down. And it beat down. And it beat down.

--

The clock a story up and fifty yards away read "9:47." Dean had been awake for exactly three hours and twenty minutes. He still had exactly an hour and thirteen minutes before lunch – before the shade. His drooping eyes (drooping not for lack of sleep, but more as a permanent fixture of his face, all the easier to express his apathy) gazed down at the ball in his right hand. It was battered, airless, and discolored: something JFK may have played with when he was a kid. It had seen better days. He gazed out over the crowd of prisoners aimlessly milling about in the stretch of 500-plus yards surrounding him. He noticed a lanky fellow with a mangy top of brown hair. The head to which the hair was attached turned uncertainly this way and that; he was a new guy.

Dean cocked his arm back and threw the ball, turning the opposite direction before he could witness the satisfying collision that would take place.

He resumed the one activity that he ever attempted with much energy: nothing.

His eyes stared on. And they stared on. And they stared on.

--

There was a long, winding snake inside the Southern Oklahoma Correctional Facility, and it was hungry. The snake consisted of roughly three hundred inmates, all jostling for their appropriate place in the lunch line. The bodies collided, men trading blows to each other's shoulders, insults being tossed out with practiced familiarity, and the occasional arm around the shoulders. It was a companionable air – all the more ironic when one took into consideration the people who were its perpetrators: roughnecks who were guilty of child murders; grand larceny; rape; depraved indifference to their children, the elderly, or the family dog. They were disgusting, the dregs of society, and they were hanging out with their cohorts in a happy, buzz.

_"Eat your heart out, Alanis,"_ Dean thought, a brief flickering of his old humor coloring his eyes. And then the irises went dead again, the colors fading and hardening into a shell worn from years of mistreatment. If this was his emotional armor, it was horribly patched-together, probably not able to deflect even the weakest of psychic blows. But one had to hope…to keep the storm at bay…

The line moved forward, surging its captive prisoner ahead twenty feet. Up ahead, the entrance to the kitchen loomed, dank and poorly maintained. As they individually noticed they were nearing the kitchen – and thus another day's meal – each individual surrounding Dean got more rowdy. A few even bumped into Dean's shoulder now and again, jostling him roughly. He could care less; he was already gone. He had been for a while.

--

His eyes were staring at his plate of pre-processed, government-approved slop, but they weren't seeing it. It wasn't a physical disability, really. The cones and rods inside his eye balls were firing well enough, each color being received loud and clear. More, it was another version of his "color-blindness," wherein everything came out some sickening shade of gray. Any normal human being would have been ever so slightly enraged at their sudden lack of capacity to understand the vivid shades of a normal human life. Dean just picked up his plastic spork and began shoveling.

--

A chain gang, circa the late 1970s: seventeen of the most physically-outstanding prisoners had been plucked post-meal to work out around the edge of the prison, landscaping and picking up litter. It was thrilling work, to say the least, and Dean was having a blast. For the next two-and-a-half hours, he methodically bent down, plucked weeds, threw them away, spread mulch, bagged trash, and wiped the sweat from his brow roughly, oh, 1,491 times. It was going to be 

one of those days. If Dean were a man prone to much observing, or really just noticing his surroundings in general, he'd have cursed the heavens for making this the fourth day of this kind he'd been given in two weeks. But he didn't even part his lips for a curse, or some salty language. Instead he sucked in a fresh breath, and kept chugging along.

_Chugging along…_

--

Fresh from the shower that evening (it was a Wednesday, which meant Dean's side of the hallway got to bathe), his cell bed actually looked half-way appealing, moth-eaten blankets, one-inch mattresses, and all.

He waited his turn patiently. After all, when you're in a line of a dozen people, each having to be escorted to their cells, time is hardly of the essence. This is one of the things Dean had learned during his stay, one of many. Needless to say, it had all been very educational. For example, the former-hunter could now probably successfully traverse South-Central L.A. without becoming someone's "bitch." (The fact that he probably could have before as well escaped him, slipping past his dull grasp.)

They came for him. The man that stepped forward from the gaggle of guards lounging off to the side was actually a guard that Dean liked…or, at least, didn't hate. He was taller, buzzed brown head, and possessed of a gait not unlike a domestic bull (if such a thing existed): swaggering, raw, but tame.

"Batter up," the man said as he herded Dean into the corridor that would lead to his cell. The interesting thing was in his technique. Not only did he carry himself in a muted fashion, but his tactics were also quieter. Most of his comrades went more for the rough grab-the-elbow, or a menacing whispered half-threat. Not him, he preferred to let his presence persuade his charges. And like a charm, it worked every time.

The bars appeared in Dean's vision. For some reason, he could always pick out the exact restraints of his cage. Perhaps it was the slightly-duller shade of gray with which they were painted. Or maybe it was that the third bar from the left had a rusty gash wrapped around it from top to bottom. Or maybe Dean was just keener at things than he had thought.

_"But if that's true, then why did I let—"_ No.

Dean entered the tiny room in an even deeper haze than the one he'd been occupying for the last six months. He turned toward the door, and the guard, as he sank onto his bed.

"Sleep tight, and all that shit," was the guard's only reply to his prisoner's perplexed gaze. Remembering that his wife had cautioned him to be even nicer to the convicts and felons he watched (even though, he mentally retorted, he was still the nicest prison guard currently employed), the man threw about in his head for something to help clear Prisoner #3087 from his fog.

_Eureka_.

"Hey, Winchester?" The guard had suddenly put a face with the number in his head.

"Errnh?"

"Remember to wake up bright-and-early tomorrow: you're gettin' out of here." A cursory smile finished the man's statement as he turned back up the hallway, not even bothering to stick around for the ecstasy he was sure Winchester was feeling right now. After all, he was one benevolent sonuvabitch.

Dean sat on his bed, processing – his self-enforced fuzziness grasping at key phrases for comprehension of this latest turn.

_Out. Gone. Free._

Alone.

**II**

_Wallet? Check._

_Watch? Check._

_Socks? Check._

_Boots? Check._

_Cross? Check._

_Shirt? Check._

_Pants? Check._

_Underwear? Check._

_7-inch Bowie? Check._

His mental list of the things that should have been returned to him two hours ago from the Personnel Office having been reviewed, Dean Winchester continued in 

his endeavors of staring out the dirty cab window as the scenery sped by. The driver was quiet, and the scenery was bland. And yet focusing and memorizing every detail of their respective existences was key to his survival at the moment. Together they would be his life raft and oars amidst this sea of turmoil.

Inwardly, subconsciously, he was struggling against surging waves and seething winds.

Outwardly, his face was relaxed and blank, and his jaw was slack (a little drool was even escaping).

It would have been disconcerting under normal circumstances for anyone who had formerly known Dean Winchester to see him now – all trace of his vibrancy gone. But now it was downright shocking: after all, he was a free man. Shouldn't he celebrate?

If there had been energy for his internal monologue to respond, it would have with a healthy "No!" But as it was, there was too much time already being spent just maintaining his carefully-cultivated demeanor. He couldn't lose it now, as he caught sight of the future, because he'd also glimpsed the ugly past.

He couldn't lose it, but he was.

"Motel Six, just like you asked." The taxi had stopped.

"Oh, sure; here's the fare."

"Thank you, have a nice day."

"Uh-huh," was the only response, as the "reformed-felon" left the backseat and trundled up the cracked sidewalk with his ratty canvas bag. _"Perhaps, within the cheaply-lit confines of this crap hole, I can find some peace,"_ Dean thought.

Ah, but if it were that easy, stories like this would never have been written.

The clerk had been busy, and the interchange between himself and the man behind the Plexiglas had been therefore quite brief. Accordingly, five minutes after his swift exit at the motel's entrance, Dean stood just in front of the closed bedroom door, his eyes lazily surveying what his 25 dollars had bought him.

There was a bed, semi-clean, which was nice. There was also a creaky dresser from the 70s, perfect for storing his clothes, which seemed roughly as old. And there was a television, bruised and battered, but still able to transmit and receive signals.

Dean threw his bag on top of the dresser as he walked closer to the bed, not even stopping to see if the bag's miniscule weight would collapse the dilapidated piece of furniture. It didn't, thankfully.

He came to rest against the thin bedspread with a small sigh. His head turned by inches, degrees really, to inspect his quarters. He saw the t.v. remote. He picked it up, aimed it at the black square in the opposite corner, and pressed.

The television turned on, and as soon as it did Dean wished it hadn't.

It was a stray thing really, a coincidence; no one, not Dean or the Heavens or anyone, could have predicted its traitorous presence in so trashy a place. Grief like this, _pain_ like this, didn't visit cheap roadside motels. But here it was, shining like a neon beacon, and it penetrated the young man 1,000 times over. Needles like fire – recalling an earlier night when a similar flame had taken him down – pressed their advantage from every corner. If Dean had possessed it in himself to writhe along the covers, he would have. But the long set-in stoicism pressed down almost as hard as this fresh torment. By turns he was relinquishing the void inside his chest, letting the blood flow freely, and gripping onto it with all his might.

Thoughts burbled up like noisy out-laws, posing questions left long unanswered, throwing insults and flinging mud at a soul long-tarnished. And still the needles came. And still the void persisted, giving up nary an inch of its occupancy. If, by God, some measure of heartache, some forsaken memory, would enter into a life so sullied now, now, it would do so only at the greatest price.

This is what Dean vowed, as he sat, his jaw twitching ever just so, facing the television – its screen aglow with the latest local _hunting_ show.

Seventeen minutes later, the man's face (complete with eyes like caverns: dark, deep, drafty, and vacant) turned toward the clock on the wall.

5:03

"I need a drink."

**III**

Outside, all was endless misery and cold – the wind whipping like chains, the great expanse of the West looming, daunting, like a frozen ocean – but inside, the bar was nice: warm.

It was more modern than its crumbling outer façade would indicate; and it was cleaner than any shop on this "Strip" on Main Street had any right to be. There were people, there was a haze of smoke, and there was a pool table. A spark awoke, bright and cheerful, at these realizations, for however brief a time, before quailing once more within the man.

He advanced to the bar with a halted gait: part swagger, part uncertainty. These were his old stomping grounds, as it were, but they had long been without their champion, their master. What other changes had surfaced while he'd been away, what surprises lurked within the mugs, and their amber contents? It was absurd really, to care so much about the atmosphere of a local bar, but bars had always been special to the Winchesters (two of them, anyway), and so were treated with special attention.

"What can I get you?"

"Something on the rocks: I want it to burn."

"Yes sir, coming right up."

He turned to rest against the long, well-sanded wood. Next time him sat a trucker, gulping thirstily before his too-soon exit; on the other side, a woman. No, a blonde. Another spark awoke…and it died more slowly. If at all.

He advanced, heedless into hedonism, his most consistent distraction.

"Hello." She looked up, a smile flickering when she noticed her visitor.

"You should know, before we go any farther into 40s banter," she laughed slightly at her own allusion, "that I'm only in it for the sex."

"And you think a guy like me," he laughed identically to her at his own self-deprecation, "isn't the exact same way?"

"I think the macho-exterior of 'Sex, Lies, and Videotape' really masks some deeper Mommy and/or Daddy issues with most men. And I don't play psychoanalyst to my lovers, so I try and pick ones least likely to burst into tears half-way through the deed."

"Darlin', in my experience, if anyone cries half-way through 'the deed' with me, it's usually the woman."

"Says the insecure ex-Alpha," she responded, smiling again when she assumed her observation had hit a nerve. It had, in some distant corner of Dean's dusty heart, but that was the idea, his subconscious screamed: revelation would be painful, but it would be forced upon him.

Consciously, he decided he was going to turn the conversation towards a more comfortable position – toward the bedroom.

"Let's say we test your theories, in a more private place?" His hand found hers, and all comments to the contrary, their connection was pretty immediate. Her face flushed.

"The bedroom? Surely your ego would profit more from a public display?"

"But it's not them I want, honey, it's you."

"Says the wolf as he leads the lamb to slaughter."

"That's where the wolf got it all wrong, I think: the lamb would have gone happily had she known the pleasure in store with this 'slaughter.'"

"Are you willing to test that theory?"

"If you are," he said, hoping his eyebrows had been quirked in a pretty-good approximation of desire and beckoning.

A sigh, the woman tousled her hair slightly, its colors too brilliant in that seconds-long shimmering for a place so dull as this.

"Lead the way."

As the pair turned from the bar, Dean finally noticed his drink was ready, had been for awhile. He threw down three crinkled bills and kept going into the evening.

There were better vices to be pursued.

**IV**

Amidst all the ecstasy currently enrapturing the man and woman as they rested after their hours-long tryst, there is something else.

A sigh ghosts over a pair of lips. A head turns. Figures are studied by the light of the moon, by previous expectations now either upheld or disappointed. There is a lot of sizing up one must do, post-coital, and that holds true even for those of us who have little to re-observe, re-calculate.

A thought skittered across the contours of Dean's mind.

"Who are you?" he asked the willowy blonde lying next to him.

"A psych major; I go to the community college down the highway, umm, that way," she points in a vague, half-circle to the window by the bed.

Dean barks once, coarse laughter at the obviousness of his subconscious.

"Is that funny?"

"You're not funny; but the needs of my manipulative head," he stabs at his forehead, "are. Examine that one, if you would." It's a joke, a jab at her profession, but a look crosses her face: either she'll except the challenge, or send it up, or both.

"Well," she turns on her side to him, her skin like porcelain, hard and rare, "have you ever been molested?"

"You're joking?"

"Isn't this all a joke?"

"Sure…I guess."

"Then play along."

"Well then no, I've never been molested."

"Were you abandoned by your parents as a child?"

"It wasn't quite abandonment, not really. My mom died when I was young, and my dad adjusted – so, no to that too."

"Ok then…have you ever faced any other Lifetime-esque challenges?"

She is still joking, and admittedly it's Dean's fault for letting the charade advance this far. As such, he's in too deep, and the memories her question digs up come fast and furious: he doesn't have time to hide before they're on him.

It's over in a matter of seconds, but it still takes a lifetime.

Out of the blanketing darkness come specks of light, of remembrance:

_A dark yard, fearful and tense, and a confrontation there that ends all wrong._

_A ride in a police car that masks a battle worth everything; fire and ice._

_A reunion and a final meeting; a photograph._

The photograph develops in his head into an unruly young man. The face is idealized – free of all the bruises that were actually there that night – and at first such a visage is but foil for confusion. Then everything clicks. The darkness gives way to blinding light, the specks having been the heralds. Dean quails from such radiance, struggles to escape, but is enraptured by it.

There are two kinds of loneliness, a great author once wrote, and the kind that wields such radiance as this isn't something easily bottled up. Or, if it is, it explodes when least expected, like a supernova in a dead galaxy.

Dean was the dead galaxy, and he was witnessing an explosion.

"Did I hit a nerve?" He gropes out onto her voice, like a blind man will a cane. His eyes don't move to her face, though: he can't see her, the light of his memories has stolen that ability from him.

"No, no," he stutters out. "It's just…" he trails off. She lets him, though she continues to lay contentedly by his side. The resulting silence battles back the light in his head, his soul, and nearly an hour later, Dean can see again.

Dean can think again.

Dean can remember again.

The stifling balm of the dying night has given way to the bracing chill of an early winter morning and Dean Winchester is awake to witness it for the first time in six months.

He is awake and he is resolved.

"I've got work to do."


	3. The Way Things Are

**I**

Everywhere he turned someone smiled back at him.

Everywhere he turned someone threatened harm.

--

"We're Mid-West boys out here son, and we have a certain way of doing things," someone told him not fifteen minutes after he'd stepped off the transport bus. At the time, Sam had felt he'd had a solid grip on what that meant (hadn't he watched enough episodes of _Oz _on HBO?), but the thing about grips is, they grow precarious and slippery, and once you let go…

It's a long way down.

--

The fall didn't actually take any longer than expected, which surprised most of the veterans on Sam Winchester's cell block. They'd heard so much about him, after all – long days spent in front of the rec room television, relishing the tabloid exploits of the two delinquents, and such. It had almost become a sport for the guys, each month betting on how much new carnage would be reported on the nightly news – and credited to the Winchester brothers. Very few of the convicts had seen _Natural Born Killers_, but those who had recognized and were amused by the resemblance. What was left for them but this, they thought, what harm was there in living vicariously through another dark soul's deeds? And so they came to admire the Myth, the Legend, of Dean and Samuel Winchester.

And each subsequent day since the latter's sudden arrival to their precious little abode, the inmates had tried to cover their own discontent with the disparity between the image and the reality of this lanky twentysomething, this _boy_. Each day was another disappointment for their group, until one of them finally realized another joy to be had from the newest catch: seeing how long this "depraved individual" would take to become another hum-drum nobody eating prison slop for twenty-to-life. Some bet high – "He'll never crack," they swore – and some low – "He's like a newborn kitten," was the explanation – but all parties were definitely involved. And half of them were definitely disappointed when the harsh truth of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution came down on Sam with a crushing weight in a pretty-average time table.

It was his collapse, though, that was rewarding for everyone to see.

--

Day 27: Nothing new to report; I'm afraid if this keeps up my nifty little Internal Monologue's going to be kind of empty. Tony, my "roommate," still snores. My left arm hurts pretty regularly. It makes it difficult to sleep. I miss Dean.

--

Day 32: I'm sick of being sized-up every time I'm herded outside for my hour of "fresh air." The leers and curiosity really irk a guy, you know? No, of course you don't: you're just the empty space in my head. You don't talk back…but I wish you would. I miss Dean.

--

Day 46: The air broke on our cell block, and the heat makes my jumpsuit itchier than it usually is. I guess it'd bug me, but honestly without the itch to focus on, I might go crazy. No one to talk to, nothing to do, no hunts to go on, certainly – it's just nothing. I miss Dean.

--

Day 54: I've gone crazy. It's sort of relaxing, in a way. My head and my legs move when they need do, doing what they're ordered, but me, me I just float. I miss Dean, but I pity him, too. If only he could have what I have; the _peace_ of it is addictive.

--

Day 61: The Warden bitched me out today. Or, at least, that's what I think it was. His face was all screwed up and red, and his lips were moving really big (spit was flying everywhere) but I wasn't really listening. It's difficult on such a nice day, to listen to him. The calm is too strong to resist, too tempting to want to remain tied down back here.

--

Day 89: The calm isn't absolute. And for the first time in a very long while, that scares me. It cracks sometimes, and stuff slips through: stuff I don't want to see. There was a man yesterday afternoon, or pieces of him, scattered in some woods – Tennessee, I think? – and this thing leaving them to go back into the daylight. And the other night, I was just swimming through oblivion when suddenly, a storm. Terror and fear, death and destruction by the gallons. I can't take it. The calm can't leave me. Nothing is allowed to leave me.

--

Day 103: I've organized an outing for myself. It's a small thing, really. But I'm proud of it. I'm going to the attic, upstairs – try and sift through all the old junk in my head, toss it out. My thinking is, if there is more free space up in the ol' noggin, they'll be more room for the Calm to spread. It'll feel nice. And it's always nice to get out.

--

Day 117: It was damned tricky, I'll admit; there was more junk up there than I expected. All of it had to go though, that's what I decided. It'd take too much energy to sort through the various piles, setting aside anything. What was the use anyway? I didn't need the prison stuff, I'd mastered that pretty well by now (I'd warrant my body is pretty well broken in after all these months of auto-pilot). And the other stuff, snatches of fires and demons and people always peering in and over me, that couldn't even be real. The last person to peer in on me was Tony before they dragged him off to Isolation – crazy dude tried to stab me in my sleep. No, I had to get rid of all of it. And now I feel so much better, so much _calmer_. What could be the harm, anyway? It's not like I'll need that room anymore…

--

Day 174: It isn't true; it's a horrible joke – a lie. I'm getting out. Well, what's left of me is. Can I take the Calm, I won't have a choice. I can't readily survive without it. What do I do in a situation like this? I miss– No. I've got to fight, to cling to what I've got. I've got the Calm, and I'm going to keep it, I'll keep up pretenses and waltz out happy-as-can-be if that's what they want. To satisfy them. They say they're so sorry for this little miscarriage of justice. They had no idea I'd been obtained against my will and shipped here for six months with so little evidence, that the FBI had suppressed my rights, tried to smuggle me down the rabbit hole. They had no idea such a mistake could be made. Welcome to the club, gentleman.

So here I stand, in the whipping winds of the winter season. The Calm is like sand between my fingers; it's slipping away from the harsh temperatures back into the warmth of the prison. Don't go, I scream silently, my voice reverberating against the barren inner walls of my head. Should I follow? Don't have much a choice there: I can't really, it'd be insane. Wouldn't it? Staring out over the empty landscape, the flat, dead grasslands, I feel a kinship with them. Surely we are one and the same: both shocked, stunted, into submission. My eyes find the road; my hands find the cold air, a thumb already lifting.

What now?

**II**

The thumb, so recently lifted into the frozen air, quickly becomes of use.

There is a noise: a quiet rumble as tires grind softly against the asphalt, a protestation from the vehicle, asking its owner not to stop, not for this man, this convict. He – as we can now clearly ascertain the driver is male – does anyway. Sam thanks him silently.

The passenger doors is roughly two feet from Sam, but he feels awkward just getting in. A part of him demands décor, demands that he thank the man on the driver's side, or wait for a sort of mini-palaver out here in the cold. But that part of him is much smaller than it used to be, thought long extinct actually. He opens the door with little pretense and slides in. Décor be damned.

"Where to, stranger?" The voice of the driver possesses a certain sincerity about it that doesn't quite relax the hitchhiker so much as it eases him. Slightly.

"I'm not really sure…uhh…"

"You just got out?" A finger is hooked back toward the government building. It need not be: Sam knows what "out" refers to.

"Kind of."

"Did you escape?"

"_You could say that."_

"No, fun as that would have been," a mirthless laugh from between his cracked lips, "actually they let me go."

"Good behavior?"

"A technicality."

"I bet you were all torn up inside." Geniality has begun to color the previous tone of sincerity, creating a warm cocktail in the driver's voice.

"Just devastated if you want to know the truth," Sam responds. And suddenly a smile passes back too; the geniality is working its way inside the exonerated-felon, and when he laughs just a little this time, it isn't bitter.

"I'm Matt, and I'll be your driver for the day." The man sticks out his hand, allowing Sam the first full look at him since he so unceremoniously hitchhiked his way into his life.

He's shorter than Sam, as most men are, and just a tiny bit skinnier. He was wearing a long-sleeve gray t-shirt and extraordinarily baggy cargo pants; and while the latter piece revealed that Matt had a layer of muscle on him, the overall effect of the ensemble was very much "little boy swimming in daddy's clothes." Another smirk entered Sam's face, this time having nothing to do with how warm a personality his driver had.

"Care to share the joke, oh-so-woeful hitchhiker of mine?" At Matt's earnest yet sardonic side-expression as he posed the question, Sam could only bark out a short quick response – laughter.

"Don't worry, it's not too bad; it's just…all of _this_. I mean, ten minutes ago I was standing on the side of the road, flapping and in the cold wind and now…"

"Now you've canoodled your way into a stranger's vehicle, free of charge, for a warm trip to nowhere and some pleasant conversation. It all sounds pretty good to me." Somewhere amidst Matt's finishing of Sam's sentence, the presumed accusation, or exasperation, had melted once again into the complete serenity of his personality. It was inevitable in all things, apparently.

"Yeah, totally – glad you understand me so well," Sam replies. If the man would prefer some back-and-forth to fill the time, by all means, but there is something else lurking in the dimples of Sam Winchester's easy smile, or in the crinkle of his eyes, unleashed as it feels it's host feel happiness; there is a tragedy there, and it is aching to get out, to be heard.

A battle ensues in seconds' time.

Sam's face cracks, heals, cracks again, strains against the strain for some modicum – some caricature – of "normal," and then crumbles, finally. Like some shelled-out building after Major Kong sent the world to all oblivion, Sam sat for a span of seconds, his lips spontaneously twitching, trying, to smile.

"You ok?" Sam turns his head to Matt, his eyes tellingly empty as they had been that very morning, and the morning before that, and the morning before that, and the morning before that, and the morning before that…

"…" His mouth is open, but no reply forms. He waits patiently, stranded on the banks of his own situation, shipwrecked and lost without his compass.

In response to the lack of movement from his mouth, his hands start patting down his jeans, struggling with a mind of their own against a hope they'd glimpsed in memory months ago. They touched a shape in his pocket, an object, solidity. Taking it out and flipping it open, the hands' owner thinks wildly for a second it may be something life-saving, world-altering, some sort of artifice by which he can just turn to the world and the audience and the readers and scream "Gotcha!" and reset the last six months of his life.

What he finds isn't magical, but it's incredibly useful to most people. To Sam it could serve but one purpose.

It was a cell phone, and flipping it open, he began madly scrolling for Dean's number.

"_If I got out…he had to too right? And if he's out they gave him his cell phone….which means this will ring…and he'll answer…he has to answer – why wouldn't he answer? – and when he does…I don't know, we'll think of something. Pick up, pick up–"_

It's ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing…

"Hello?" It is a futile call down an empty phone line, but it's the only noise his throat and mouth want to make. Finally they stop deciding to make any noise at all.

"You ok?" Matt repeats.

His only response was a sigh, nestled in months of heartache.

**III**

The dark greets him for the nth time this year. Lying in the guest room of Matt's house, he has just started awake, in an unfamiliar bed, but in an all too familiar circumstance: wanting his big brother.

The circumstances that allow Sam to experience such circumstances are odd, when one observes from the outside in; but are actually quite benign, serendipitous even, when viewed in reverse. To most, knowing a forlorn ex-felon (that he had been exonerated meant nil) had hitchhiked with a random stranger, and then said stranger had allowed that felon to stay in his home, would have seen a breach of décor at best. At worst it was garish and horrible to imagine.

Yet to the ex-felon in question, knowing that this stranger from whom he'd stolen a ride couldn't care less about his emotional baggage, would in fact freely give up a warm bed no questions asked, was a small comfort – and a welcome one.

Still, no small amount of comfort as this prevented Sam from being awake as he now was, staring at the dark ceiling, striving to calm his rapid heartbeat. He'd been awakened by another nightmare. It was eerily like a vision, but Sam had finally remembered those, so long experienced in the past, and felt sure this wasn't one. No, it was just your run-of-the-mill terrifying dream, and it had Sam all shook up.

So here he sat, staring, trying to keep calm, and trying to stave off his encroaching hunger. (He'd gone to bed foregoing Matt's offer of dinner, his mind to fraught then with anguish to contemplate eating. It was a decision he regretted.) Sam couldn't help it: he let loose a small groan of frustration and defeat at this, another unlucky turn in the very rotten tale that was his life.

"Rough night?" Matt is at the door, and Sam turns to look at him, to quirk an eyebrow, to ask, _"What are you doing up?"_

"I heard you; I do live here, remember?" It's intended as a joke, a jibe to lighten the mood. Sam doesn't take the bait.

"I guess I'll just go then…umm, you sure you don't need anything: a punching-bag maybe?" The question is sincere, but the person who asked it is already half-way out the door when Sam responds.

"No, stay – I mean, don't go if you don't want to. Like you said, it is your house." Matt returns – expectant, but masking it well.

"I don't really no…I mean, I feel like I owe you _something_, you know for waking you up with my screaming and then you coming in here, the perfect host; but I'm no storyteller—"

"It's perfectly fine, Sam, I swear."

"—and mine isn't really a story. It's a nightmare." And with one gulping, feverish, If-I-Don't-Start-I'll-Never-Finish breath, he began to talk openly for the first time in forever.

"My girlfriend died, a house fire, when I was gone with my brother. My mother before her, too. But not right before here – this was years ago, when I was still too little to talk. Dean wasn't though, but he had to watch out for me. My dad never really did, seeing as how he got all, I don't know, screwed somehow after the fire. So it was just me and Dean. Until I went _Rebel Without a Cause_ and flew the coop to college. My dad said never come back, and I hadn't intended to. But then what do you know? Dean practically steps out of the abyss – it shocked me so much, his just showing up, that we wrestled at first, bizarre but true – and back into my life. 'It's Dad,' he says, and so I go with him. While we're gone though, it's _Fiery Death II _for Jessica. And it's just awful…awful. For a while I couldn't deal, like at all. But then here we are, a few months back, and there's this guy, right, this crazy, lunatic, guy. (He's government-employed, go figure.) And he's after us, me and Dean, for like no fucking reason and we're running – we've gotten away from him before – but then he's there again, and this time, we can't get away. And there's darkness, and an escape, it's all very Alfred Hitchcock, but then one night, there isn't the ending meet-up between the two heroes and some playful punching on little brother's shoulders. There's capture, and a long, _long_, journey into night. God it took forever. And then here I am, with you."

If Matt was winded, shocked, or in any way surprised at the marathon speech his guest had given, he showed very little indication of it. Instead, he just replied, matter-of-factly.

"Sounds likes shit."

"It sounds like an E! True Hollywood Story, and I'm sorry I just dumped it on you." Suddenly, Sam was realizing the implications of his act, what he'd just dropped into the lap of the one nice person he'd encountered in too many God-forsaken months.

"No, no it's fine. Your stuff isn't nearly as bad as the last prisoner I picked up on my ride home from work," Matt offered, a twinkle of playful sarcasm in his eyes.

"Yeah, but I bet that guy didn't wake you screaming in the middle of the night?"

"True, but he wasn't nearly as young. This guy was like some baby-murdering mummy, not a dimpled wrongly-accused man like yourself."

"Well it's good to know the upstanding citizens of Middle America can still sympathize with the likes of me." Sam wore a face of mock-graciousness to punctuate his retort.

"Aww shucks, it weren't nothing." And in return, Matt's hick-accent played up their back-and-forth with perfect understanding.

"Says the man who so charitably gave me a ride, room and board, and a hot—"

There banter, easy and nourishing as it was, ceased. There was a noise. And it was coming from the pile of Sam's clothes that'd been laid on the dresser. Wedged between his old orange prison jumpsuit (they'd let him keep it, a small token of their appreciation) and one of two pairs of his white briefs (the other was currently on his person) was his cell phone. And it was ringing.

**IV**

For the first time all night, I'm wondering what to say. I wasn't at a loss for words when I first picked up the guy currently lying in my guest bed. Nor was I speechless throughout the ride home and the early evening, as I tried to introduce him to my home. But now, and ironically after we've had our first real conversation, my mind is a blank. His is too, from what I can tell. Not that he's focusing much on what to say to me, and with good reason – his clothes are ringing, his phone I bet, and I can just tell from the look on his face who he hopes it'll be. And against my better judgment – I've know the man, Sam, all of what now? Nine hours? – I hope with him. The kid has had a hard life it seems, and I can't help but be _that _guy, the Hallmark Guy, who wants a happy ending for everyone. It's a character flaw, I suppose. Sue me.

Suddenly something occurs to me, something for me to say.

"Why don't you answer it?" I ask, hoping to spur him on to acting on his hope and curiosity.

"I…I guess I should…" His hand reaches tentatively towards it, but he realizes that the cell phone is still buried half-way across the room, so his hand does little good suspended in its current position. I think that I might have to remind him he'll have to get up, but he does it on his own.

With a barely perceptible knocking of the knees, he walks (or rather, lopes, owing to his massive gait) over to the dresser, and digs around for the phone. I catch sight of an orange jumpsuit, probably his from prison, and have but seconds to imagine such a tall guy as Sam wrapped in such a bright orange color before he answers the phone.

"Hello?" His face is a mask of enforced indifference, but even before the answer I can tell it's a shoddy façade. And afterward, it becomes apparent – nakedly so.

Everything crumbles, but on him, at this very moment, it doesn't seem such a brutal act. It's much more a relinquishing, a giving in warmly to a relaxing massage, than a breaking down, like the World's Oldest Car.

Sam tries to respond to whatever the person on the other line is saying, and I note bemusedly that it's not going so well. Really all I can make out from him is a series of incomprehensible mumbles and stutters. It's kind of adorable, in a nervous puppy sort of way.

Sam's gone silent, given up on his endeavor to make any sort of normal human communication. It seems he'll get along just fine doing something else; I'd call it subconscious, but it goes deeper I guess. I'm pretty sure it's Dean he's on the phone with, but whoever it is, he doesn't actually need to speak to talk.

His brow furrows then, for just a second. Then two. Then three. It's a prolonged furrowing of the brow. Why, I wonder. Then he opens his mouth, and I assume it'll be round two of his verbal stumbling, but instead out comes a voice of certainty, of restoration, of strength. It isn't the voice of the same guy I took back to my house, but I'm equally impressed with him. And with Sam, for finding this guy and pulling him forward. Maybe Dean had something to do with it.

"I'm here," Sam says, and suddenly I can see a reunion close in the brothers' future.


	4. Fast as You Can

_Author's Note: I know, I know – it's taken me _far _too long to write this last chapter. But I hope y'all enjoy it (I tried to make it at once both the most satisfying and longest that I could, as a reward for my absence). And of course, enormous thanks to my beta, Adara, who could care less that I dropped off the radar for more than a month. Oh, and PS: For the sake of this mild-AU, let's assume Dean's whole deal thing never went down, k?_

**I**

A steady, low scream in the night: the sound of tires rolling on a dark highway, endlessly, towards a fixed destination.

The scream belonged to the tires.

The tires belonged to the Impala.

The Impala belonged to Dean Winchester.

And Dean belonged wholly and utterly to his destination: his brother.

The night was calm and cool; a breeze stirred the leaves along the road on which Dean was currently sweeping at 60 mph. But inside the vehicle, all was tumultuous. Disregarding the erratic, extraordinarily loud, music being filtered into the tiny space every second of every minute of those long hours Dean spent driving, the emotions currently running in overdrive were equally stormy. The night was calm, but the man journeying through it was not.

He really should have answered his phone – that's what it all boiled down to. And in hindsight, it was easily, and equally, the most ironic and moronic act Dean had ever committed.

It was ironic because he'd only just vowed to himself (and in part to Psych Girl, since he was talking out loud) to find his brother, and re-ignite the most vital connection in his life.

And it was moronic because when an opportunity to do just that had appeared, he'd let it past by – waved even, in dumb ignorance, as its train pulled away from the station.

Well what was he supposed to do?! For a moment, consider it from his perspective, if you would. He was famous, in his own small way, for accomplishing impossible tasks; and he'd just set before himself a big impossible task – finding a brother whose location he didn't know. Heady on the sense of vast possibility for doing the impossible, yet still lying in a cheap bed with an unknown woman (who he'd just had sex with, no less) and wearing nothing but a pair of white boxer-briefs the prison had sent him packing with, what, really, were Dean's options? On the faraway dresser, his phone was ringing, and what was he to do? He did what he did – sit there, ruminating on possible courses for saving/rescuing/nurturing/etc Sam – for lack of any other apparent better option. And dropped as one is in his shoes, could they say he was wrong? Or if they could, would they then turn around and locate some possible avenue by which he could have conquered his twin feelings of success and doubt and actually crossed the room to stifle the ring tone?

Exactly.

He really should have answered his phone – that's what it all boiled down to. But he didn't answer the phone. And now he was reaping what he had sown, in whatever unknowing way he had committed the deed. And so he raced down the dark highway, breathlessly counting the remaining miles in his head – praying for the dawn that would reveal him only minutes away from the house his little brother was currently staying in.

Oh, how he prayed for dawn.

--

Before that morning, Sam had no idea just how truly aggravating linoleum could be.

And God, was it _annoying_.

It just sat there, static. It didn't offer any condolences or advice. No, it just lay on the floor all day long – heedless of the pointed stares the only human currently in residence kept throwing its way.

It wasn't particularly tacky, this linoleum, but it wasn't high-end either; however, looking around, Sam noticed other furnishings were quite nice, yet the floor was just so…so…_average_.

_"What am I thinking? I'm sitting here critiquing a _floor_. It's just linoleum, Sammy, get the fuck over it. That's hard to do though, when it's such a tempting distraction – because, well, we all know what I'd be doing if I weren't acting all _Cuckoo's Nest _in Matt's kitchen…yeah, we all know that _that_ would look far more crazy."_

And so Sam's mind rumbled on, embroiled – tying itself into knots, really – over one teensy little elephant in the room: Dean.

--

The light was just peeking over the horizon, just starting to lighten the strip of gray highway far off into the distance, when Dean took his first true breath in hours. He opened his mouth, and in rushed a tiny gasp of oxygen. It flew down into his lungs, warming and enlivening his blood, which then proceeded to go tingling down to his feet (too long numb from being pushed ceaselessly down on the accelerator). That one breath was, in effect, like thirty cups of coffee for Dean Winchester, and it got him even more anxious for his arrival.

With each moment the sky grew brighter. As the light of the day became more apparent, Dean Winchester grew more anxious. As Dean grew more anxious, his foot pressed more with greater urgency down, _down_. And as his foot pressed down, he required more oxygen – only allowing himself a tiny gasp every few minutes.

And around and around his merry go round went. Around, and around.

--

"You're up?"

"I never went to sleep."

"Oh. I kind of figured…"

"That I'd go to bed after the big news, right? That surely a normal human being would need to 'catch some Zs' if they wanted to be in a fully-healthy state of mind for this, the biggest of fucking long-lost reunions."

"Uhh, yeah."

"I kind of thought that too."

"So…"

"If you were getting into some sort of routine, you know, work or something, I could go be cynical and reticent upstairs."

"And deprive myself of your company? Heh, fat chance. Besides, I'm off today – I'm not sure you'd want to know, but this little Podunk town you're currently stewing in is celebrating its centennial festival all day long. You know, overcooked food in big crowds waiting for some brief moment or two of sub-satisfying entertainment. So, umm, I'm off today."

"Are you going to hang around?"

"Are you?"

A smirk, tired and startled into employment.

"Well?" A return volley of goodwill.

"Yeah, no. You still have me to contend with at least until…you know–"

"'The biggest of fucking long-lost reunions.'"

"Exactly." Another tired facial expression – one would even call it a smirk, had it lasted longer than a millisecond.

"The more the merrier."

And Matt started breakfast.

--

"What. The. Hell?!"

This is what Dean had been shouting inside his vintage Impala for the past – he checked his watch for the fourth time in frustration – 23 minutes. He'd been shouting because he was late, by his calculations (though, for the record, neither of the brothers had chosen a specific meeting time, both being too shell-shocked at the time). He'd been shouting at the madness currently blocking him from moving more than three feet every thirty seconds down Main Street. (Which was, ironically, America's longest Main Street: a record 4,135 feet. Poor Dean.)

There were clowns and middle-aged women with strollers and snow cones and gaggles of seven-year olds high on helium from the balloon-station currently sitting about a third the way into the intersection he was driving up on.

"Christ," he added, in case Jesus wasn't already glued to his television over the unfolding saga. It was a circus, it was _hell_. And it was taking up all the precious fucking daylight he'd driven so hard to find in the first place. This was not happening. It just was _not_.

Except that it was.

"Goddamn it," he added – to himself, to the crowd he was about to mow down, to Jesus (again) – and started driving.

Through Main Street.

Through the festival.

Heaven help the seven-year olds.

--

His anger at the linoleum intermingled in his head with the smell of a farm-fresh omelet (hot off Matt's stove, mind you, and not microwaved) creating an odd effect. He kept picturing some sort of physical manifestation for his frustration taken out on the floor tiles…and then, inevitably, either he or the floor would turn yellow, puffy, and organically tasty.

"I feel like a chicken, all 'cooped' up," he thought.

"Ah, a joke – I think that's what the shrinks would call progress," Matt responded, as he turned from the stove to quirk an eyebrow at his guest.

Ok, so he hadn't thought it. He'd said it. Out loud. He'd have to get better control of that before Dean came.

_"Good, looks like I've stopped thinking of it as a slight possibility now. It's a certainty, Sam's subconscious, so go ahead and get the hell over it," _Sam thought (for real this time).

Happy with himself for having momentarily forgotten about floor tiling and chickens, and for finally deciding that this reunion was actually happening – and it wasn't some sad, elongated fantasy of his – Sam Winchester sat back resolute in his chair in Matt's kitchen.

And promptly went to sleep.

--

_"Are cold cuts acceptable at an Oprah-moment?"_ Matt wondered as he stood over the stove, finishing his and Sam's breakfast.

_"I mean, I could always run over and get some, I don't know, baked beans and slaw and maybe some ribs I'd have to re-heat. Do I have any barbeque sauce? I'd have to get some of that. Will they eat A-1? Who doesn't eat A-1? It's just like those commercials say…but getting across town would be impossible. I'd have to do it on foot. How weird would I look: hoofing it back here carrying bags full of cold ribs and cole slaw and barbeque sauce. At least I'd do my weirdest act on the town's weirdest day of the year." _Then Matt remembered what exactly was supposed to be going down in his home at some point today.

_"Scratch that. I guess it's the weirdest day for the whole world."_

He nodded once more to himself, working out the details of how, if he could snatch a moment away, he'd run to the market and get something other than cold roast beef and bread for his guests to eat. First though, he had to cook the bacon for breakfast. And tell Sam he might be going out for a minute or two.

Matt plopped the bacon into the pan on the stove, freshly cleaned from having made omelets, and turned back to the kitchen table to accomplish just those two tasks.

And instead of meeting the countenance of a young man jaded and battered by life, he saw a seemingly even younger man, asleep in one of the kitchen chairs – slouching almost to the floor. He couldn't have dozed off for longer than a few minutes, but Matt resolved for that short time to not be the only given to him as rest today. After all, he'd need his strength.

_"I'll go in a bit, if he wakes up. If he doesn't, you know what? Screw A-1."_

Matt turned back to his stove.

He had been cooking not even ten minutes longer, the bacon had just started to sizzle, the grease and fat running off the pieces in tiny rivulets, when the doorbell rang.

**II**

It was absurd really, the situation he found himself in. But absurdity was the sort of currency these circumstances dealt in, and God only knew how many strange circumstances Dean had found himself embroiled in over the course of the last year: fighting the Seven Deadly Sins, dying over and over (and, to hear Sam tell, over and over and over and over and _over_), having to deal with those freaks Ed and Harry again, and then, as he could never forget, the two most important new women in his life – Ruby and Bella. Yeah, it was a fucking crazy year. And so why wouldn't he expect to find himself, at the end of it, standing on the stoop of some stranger's house in some no name town about to talk to his little brother for the first time in six months?

Well…when you put it like that…

But what was really, truly, blow-your-mind-all-over-the-pavement absurd was what was happening now. He'd found Sam, found him in seemingly no worse for the wear condition, and supposedly he was just a few feet away through a less than sturdy wooden barrier.

The more he thought about it, the more he was rankled and electrified by the very idea of just going to get his little brother – plunging straight into unknown territory like he used to do to save the one person who mattered much of anything to him anymore.

But the more he thought about, and the more he wanted to do something, the less he did.

God, he knew he should go in, screw courtesy and waiting for the door to be opened for him, because he was Dean Winchester and he knew exactly what he was going to find when he went in the house – and he wanted it back.

But then that recurring thought, the one that kept him frozen (if still thrumming with desire): he didn't know what he would find when he was finally let in (or when he finally busted down the door). Would it be his brother? Could he be unchanged? Dean wasn't, and going by that same logic, his brother wouldn't be either. And the thought that there was an impact to him when the one person in the world who should have stopped it was hours away locked up himself tore at him, tearing little gashes all across his heart. His breathing grew ragged and still he tensed up further into infinite coils of doubt and intent, frustration and action. He was a panther tensed to strike.

Scratch that, he was a panther half-way in the air, when he suddenly hit a sky-high cement wall.

_"I know what I want. Right? Right. But…no, I _know_. It's Sam. It. Is. Sammy. No questions. Screw it_."

Dean's hand rose to the doorknob, intent on all manner of violent entries, when he was spared the excursion. The door opened for him.

--

Matt couldn't lie. Late at night, after a shift when he wasn't quite yet nodding off, he'd channel surf. And sometimes he'd find himself watching TLC. And on TLC sometimes he'd see the big reunion shows – you know, where the adopted child meets their biological parent, or the adult siblings estranged for decades by this or that grudge from the age of Methusala finally reconcile at the local Denny's.

Matt had seen it all, or most of it, on late night cable. And so he considered himself in his head (in only the most sardonic of tones, mind you) just the tiniest bit of an expert. He had questions, sure – who wouldn't if they were letting a strange man, who was _just released from prison_, into their home? But, in his reckoning, the guy – Dean – had been grounded enough to calm Sam down the tiniest bit, so he couldn't be, like, the next Charles Manson.

This is what Matt kept firmly in the forefront of his mind as he walked to the door, quickly trying to wipe off grease and other assorted kitchen juices from his stint as short-order cook just a second ago.

He grasped the cool metal of the doorknob, assembled as smile on his face, and pulled.

_"Well, he isn't Charles Manson," _Matt thought immediately, wryly. Standing in front of him was a man of about his age, maybe a year older, who looked very much in the middle of something. What it could be, to any naked observer, would be quite astounding: after all, what more is there to do on a front porch but ring a doorbell and wait patiently for fifteen or thirty seconds? But, remember, Matt fancied himself just the slightest bit the expert. (Plus, he'd had time with part two of this equation, and so was partially fluent in Winchester body language already.) He saw the tense shoulders and the hovering hand, the furrowed brow, the eyes cloudy with all manner of bone-deep emotions. He saw, and he understood.

"You must be Dean."

And his understanding was rewarded with a nod, distracted but terse, and his entrance into Matt's home.

"He's just right through here," Matt explained, motioning with his hand down the hall to the kitchen. "I'll take you to him."

As they passed through the foyer, and down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, Dean's new host took a moment to glance back once or twice, to take in even more of the man so much of Sam spiraled about. In that sense, he'd expected a Sun – a great big collapsing Supernova of importance and vitality – but what he observed was more akin to a black hole. He had magnetism, Dean did, but it pulled all onlookers only into a void. Matt very much got the sense something was missing central to his new guest's charisma. And being the "expert" that he was, he already knew who that missing piece was. And where.

"I almost forgot, your brother just nodded off about fifteen minutes ago waiting for you. He hasn't gotten much sleep, so he might be a little out of it…" he explained to Dean as they walked to the entrance into the little kitchen.

"That's umm…ok, that's, I'll just…" Dean replied, or attempted to as, as he then moved without stopping into the kitchen. To Sam.

Matt, snatching one more breath, lagged a second or two behind, and then he followed Dean in.

--

"Does he look any different?" the man asks me.

_"I should know the answer, I should be able to pull something out with not even a second's pause. Come on Dean, you know this: does Sam look any different than what you imagined? Uh, let's see: he's about as tall as I'd pictured, and his color isn't as horrible as I've seen it, but he's skinnier than the Sam I knew (though I guess that's expected), and is it just me, or is everything about him just, I don't know, a little misplaced somehow – like I dreamed up this whole version of my brother in my head and then someone came by after I locked up and turned off the lights and just, umm, fidgeted. Or something."_

It's been about ten seconds since Matt asked, and he's still no closer to an answer. So he stabs into the dark – dives head-first, really.

"He's not as tan."

"Oh."

"…Yeah."

"Well," a beat of awkwardness, "go ahead and sit down, please. I'll have some food ready in a second if you're hungry." Matt doesn't wait for Dean to reply – he just hurries on the last few feet to the stove, turning his back to a drama he's suddenly realized is much too complex for his "expertise."

Dean drags his feet the last few inches to the chair next to Sam's and eases his body down into it.

He's hungry, and if his stomach were what was causing his appetite he'd have been thankful for Matt's mention of food. But he isn't hungry for food, for something to eat, for taste. He's hungry for sight, for a glimpse of his brother. And now what's being offered is a veritable buffet. So he stares, and he stares, and he stares.

Dean was right in what he thought a second ago, Sam is skinnier. That's the first real thing he notices about his little brother's person. And then it's like the flood gate open, and it all pours out:

There are circles, deep black dusky pools, under his eyes from lack of sleep.

His hair isn't as dirty as it's been, but there's enough grit there to be noticeable.

His shoes are untied.

His right pinky has a long gash up its side.

His left knee is open to the world, for all to see, because there is a large hole in his jeans.

He has about 100 more freckles and he isn't nearly as pale (Dean had been right about that too).

These are the sorts of things that pop into Dean's head as he just sits there, for what seems hours, soaking in the presence of someone so long missed, they'd been forgotten and then remembered like a waking dream.

Dean sat there and Matt finished cooking and Sam slept. And then Sam woke up.

--

There is a radio next to the stove in Matt's kitchen (mostly because Matt likes to sing while he cooks, hey…don't judge, and partly because his mother got it for him three Christmases ago) and it happens to be right behind where Sam lay sleeping, when he wakes up.

As he strives from the murky pool he'd been lying in, his eyes still closed, the first sounds he recognizes are of music, and of a voice – singing:

_"Sometimes my mind don't shake and shift, but most of the time, it does. And I'll get to the place where I'm begging for a lift or I'll drown in the wonders and the was."_

The song sounds appropriate to Sam somehow, on some level, and it stirs him further. One of his eyelids twitches. Then the other. Then they open. And suddenly he thinks maybe he isn't awake, but rather pushed into an even deeper, more intricate, state of slumber; some sort of mega-REM sleep, some über-dream. Because Dean is right in front of him, smiling uncertainly which is weird, but _right in front of him_. Seriously, not inches away. If he wanted to, he could reach out and grab him. He's more than half-tempted to do just that. He's teetering on the brink…

"Hey, Sammy."

And he's been pushed, and he's falling forward, scrambling to grab on to something – on to _him_. And he does, and it's ok suddenly, in a weird way, because he hasn't hit bottom, he hasn't splattered onto the cold and dusty rocks below. He's been rescued from his own demise, his own despair.

"I've got you," he says into the leather jacket of his savior and gets only a harder grip in return.

"I'm not letting go." Dean says into his brother's hair. And that's how Sam comes to realize that he won't be falling again for a very, very, long time.

**III**

The bread has gone nearly stale, and the coffee is cold when the conversation finally turns back to Matt. It's ironic at that point, for Matt to be finally a figure in the verbal exchanges that had dominated the last five hours, because the person in question wasn't quite aware they were discussing him. He was too busy processing the events he'd just taken in. Words had been tossed around, a story built with them of staggering emotional damage, and it'd sunk into Matt, slowly wrapping itself around his heart, strangling it. He thought he'd gotten most of the details of the overarching plot from Sam last night, when he was in full nervous-confession mode, but really he had no idea – really, none at all. And so when the brothers finally turned to him, to include him in their catch-up that had finally caught-up to the present, he didn't, at first, realize it.

Noticing their stares, he stuttered something out.

"You were, umm, you were saying?"

Dean, haggard though he looked, was determined to plow on through and tie up all the loose ends.

"Yeah, no we were just talking about how lucky Sam was that you just happened to drive by. I mean, if you hadn't…" he trailed off. He had a feeling he'd be doing that a lot in the future, if (not when, that was way too inevitable) the subject of their separation ever came up.

Noticing how he fumbled, Matt put aside his own difficulties and hastened to answer, "No, really, it was my pleasure."

"Trust me, we won't forget it," Sam added.

_"And I doubt I'll forget you," _Matt thought.

There was a lull then, as the conversation turned back to just including the Winchesters. Their host took that opportunity to glance around, noticing at once how long it had been since this morning. It'd been five hours, which was a long time for one heart-to-heart anyway, but it had felt like days. Matt came away from it bruised and battered and cleansed, in some difficult way to name, in the hard knocks another life had suffered.

More importantly though, he came away realizing how dirty his kitchen was after being continuously inhabited for any length of time.

"Would you just excuse me for a…" Matt didn't even finish apologizing for his abrupt momentary leave to clean, noticing as he did the brothers were too deep in discussion to notice him.

"Alright then, let's get to it,"he said, bringing back a pail of soapy water, a mop, and some heavy-duty gloves to his kitchen counter.

It was a nothing phrase, a time-waster, some little bit of oxygen and phonetics a bored person uses to fill an empty room, but it alighted in the ears of Sam Winchester, who found its sentiment oddly appropriate, motivating.

As much as they had done, they still had so much to do, so many large elephants in the room to strangle. And there was that little dilemma of being in some Midwest nowhere, with nothing. There was that.

Forty-five minutes later the counter was now shinier than it had been in quite some time.

The house owner was now more worldly and emotionally experienced than he ever anticipated being.

The town he lived in was now exactly 100 years old.

Oh, and yeah: the Winchesters were good as new.

Well, relatively anyway. As Dean looked back at his brother, who was just finishing another of his million sentences in this hours-long conversation, he noticed the darkness under his eyes, the ragged lines of weary around his mouth and brow.  
_"Oh, the miles to go."_

His apprehension and worry were just one small element of his thoughts however – one very tiny, miniscule part of his mental makeup. The other 99.87 was just utterly, incandescently thrilled at where he was. And who he was with.

Stopping Sam in the middle of his next thought, Dean couldn't help himself: he flashed a rare smile that enveloped his face (hell, it felt like it enveloped his whole body) and then he said:

"Sammy, I love you. And I am so _fucking happy_ we're back together."

Sam, for his part not phased a bit by Dean's sudden emotional nakedness, simply replied with a similar mega-watt smile to his brothers, and returned:

"I love you too."

--

"Not to rush you," Matt said as he set a platter of ribs (the very same ones he thought would be eaten at his "reunion lunch") for dinner, "but if you're going to move in I'll need to buy a couple more beds."

"No, no it's fine – Sam and I can share," Dean answered.

"What he means is," Sam took up instead, not without a snicker first at his brother's lame joke (oh how absence does make the heart fonder and the soul more forgiving of bad jokes), "is that though we'd love to return your generosity, we know that doesn't involve his imitating you in some wacko version of _Three's Company_–"

"I'd be John Ritter," Dean piped in. (God, having Sam back made him giddy.)

"So to answer your question," here Sam turned to mock glare at his big brother, already falling – with an inner grateful sigh – into the rhythms of their banter, "we'll be going. Soon hopefully."

"No, don't do that. I mean, do that if you want. But don't go flying out the door because I might have sounded pushy."

"You, pushy? Seriously, I practically jumped into your car when I was leaving…leaving…" Sam paused, tripped really on another pothole in his recently (if unwillingly) renovated emotional landscape.

"Prison," Dean filled in, his voice warm and protective and helpful.

"Yeah, that. My point is you being pushy, which you aren't being, would only be the reasonable response after what's happened the last two days."

"Well I'm glad you still insist on painting me as a saint. One of these days you'll have to drop a line to Oprah and fill her in on the details. Maybe then I can get free tickets to Chicago."

"Oooh, Oprah," Dean said, his giddiness swiftly returning after his brother's little stumble.

"Dean here is a big fan, in case you couldn't tell," Sam half-joked.

"No, no: I got a vibe," Matt cracked back.

"Now that we're on the subject though, and since you really are still the saint I've been imagining, could we beg just another night's stay?" Sam questioned.

"Do you even have to ask? We haven't known each other a long time, but it's not like you or your brother are going to rob me in the middle of the night and slit my throat. So absolutely you can stay here another night. I'll even get some old clothes together for your trip tomorrow. Because I'm pretty sure, Dean, you've been wearing that same outfit since you've been, umm, free. And Sam, I know you have."

"You weren't lying one bit, Sammy. Matt ranks right up there with Jesus," Dean said. He was kidding, but only slightly.

"Since you're bringing up beds then, I guess it's your not-so-subtle way of hinting you need sleep. You've got to excuse me for being a bad host; if I were more Martha I'd have strapped you and Dean down to rest hours ago."

"It's no trouble, I swear, but the more we talk about sleep–" Sam was cut off by a yawn.

"What he said," Dean added.

Matt laughed and said, "Good night then…although I guess after the days y'all had, it's hard not to be."

The situation having been decided, the Winchesters got up and started to drag themselves up the stairs, Dean following Sam back to Matt's guest room.

"Guess what?" Sam turned back in the hallway upstairs to ask his brother.

"Huh?"

"We'll have to share."

Dean could have been mock put-out by that, played along with Sam's banter some more (not an unappealing proposition), but he didn't have it in him. Truth was, being close to his brother after so many months of being apart – and being thus able to reach over at any moment and re-affirm his physical existence _here and now_ – was the best thing he could have asked for.

"I'll live," Dean said. And now, finally here in this house with Sam, he knew he meant it.

--

"It's never warm here, which sucks," Matt said, as way of explaining away the frigid weather the following late-morning, the day of the hunters' departure.

Looking at each other, a new habit neither of the Winchesters thought they'd relinquish quickly, they could only laugh.

"Not really," they simultaneously replied. And then laughed some more.

_"I think I'm going to miss them when they're gone," _Matt thought, surprising himself.

"Let me just throw this bag in the trunk and we'll be off," Sam said. (The bag in question contained their new/old wardrobe from Matt: not-too-baggy jeans and sweaters and t-shirts, some socks, and most hilariously, a still shrink-wrapped package of white men's briefs their host had dug up from the back of his closet that were just Dean's size. Dean himself, after having been informed by his brother of this latest contribution, had only this to say: "Hell _no_.")

As his little brother went to accomplish this last chore, Dean turned to Matt.

"Thanks, really, for everything." Accompanying his statement was an even more sincere Winchester thank-you: a firm look in the other man's face, and an even firmer handshake.

"No, really, _really_, it was my pleasure. It was what anyone should have done."

"Well, in my line of work you have to believe the exact opposite of people most of the time, but you – you're something else. And if you ever need anything, just call." Matt was slightly tempted to finally ferret out what it was the Winchesters did for a living that would paradoxically require them to both be very cynical and very helpful to the average citizenry. He was tempted, but he didn't ask. They'd had answers forced from them from others.

"Yeah, no, I've got your number. And trust me, if I ever run out of flour right before I make a cake, you'll be the first to know," Matt said back, earning exactly the response he wanted: laughter, hearty and real, from Dean Winchester. It was reward enough.

"Ok, the car's ready," Sam said as he walked up. Dean nodded once more at Matt and then turned back to the Impala, grabbing his brother's shoulder for a brief second as he turned.

"I'll be waiting," he said as he went. And then it was just Matt and his first ex-prisoner-houseguest.

"Dean used to say I was really good at the whole heartfelt sharing/goodbye thing, but truth is, I'm not sure I was ever any that good. It was more quantity than quality with me," an only semi-disparate laugh broke his thought, "but for you I'll make an effort. I mean, you pretty much saved me and my brother, and trust me, we know a good rescue when we see one. So I guess what I'm getting at is thank you. God, if I hadn't met you…" Matt took his chance to dive in.

"If you hadn't met me it would have been someone else. I was just happy it was me who got to help you with your brother."

"So are we, Matt, I can't even tell you." Sam punctuated this with Matt's second helping of the Winchester Gaze, but Sam's he found to be so much more poignant. It was like watching _The Way We Were _forever.

A cold wind blew between them, sending shivers over Sam's still too-skinny body.

"You better go before you freeze to death. I'd hate for all my good deeds to be wasted right before the finish line," Matt joked one last time. Sam smiled his biggest smile for the second time in two days, and then wrapped Matt in a bear hug.

"If we ever get back around to Idaho for, uh, our 'work,' we'll come visit," Sam said as he broke the embrace.

"I'll see you then."

Sam turned, slip into the passenger seat, and waved (in unknowing synchronicity with his brother) before riding into the bleak day.

_"What a week," _The man left standing in the driveway thought, and then he went inside to warm himself up – both inside and out.

--

They were a lot like the hills and the plains of the Midwest, Dean thought as he drove down the highway: shocked and beaten down, coarse and gothic, but also infinite and endurable – resilient. They'd gone through a hell of a lot, just like the land through which they were driving, but they'd gotten through. They were driving through. As he turned from the wheel to playfully punch (though it was less a punch than a warm squeeze) his baby brother's shoulder, he whispered to himself.

"We're back."

And then he laughed, and the sound seemed to float away through the cold air, warming its surrounding as it flew into nothing.

**The End.**

_Authors Note Pt. 2: So that's it. It isn't nearly as, umm, "unique" as _The Final Solution_ but if you loved it, or hated it, or were somewhere in between…review! Please? Next up I'll probably get away from _Supernatural _a little, and stray into…wait for it…_Twilight _territory but I've got one more one-shot up my sleeve for now. So stay tuned!_


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